Stephen Samuel Wise

(1874-1949)

Stephen Samuel Wise was born in Budapest in 1874 but as a child emigrated to New York where he received his Jewish and secular education. He was ordained as a rabbi in the new Jewish Theological Seminary and went on to become a Reform rabbi. However, unlike most Reform rabbis and congregants at that time, Wise was a Zionist. He attended the Second Zionist Congress in 1898 and was elected to the General Actions Committee. However, his disappointment with the movement's attitude to the North American Jewish scene led him to withdraw from active involvement.

In 1914, when Louis Brandeis headed of the American Zionist movement, Wise became his key lieutenant. Two years later, he became Chairperson of the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs and was instrumental in influencing President Woodrow Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration.

He founded the Jewish Institute of Religion in 1922 , an educational center in New York City to train rabbis in Reform Judaism. It was merged into the Hebrew Union College a year after his death.

In 1925, Wise became Chairperson of the United Eretz­Israel Appeal whilst he continued his efforts to win the Reform movement around to a pro­Zionist stance. With the rise to power of the Hitler regime, Wise took the position that public opinion in the United States and elsewhere should be rallied against the Nazis. He, along with Leo Motzkin, encouraged the creation of the World Jewish Congress in order to create a broader representative body to fight Nazism. He used his influence with President Roosevelt both in this area as well as on the Eretz­Israel question.

During the war years, Wise was elected co­chairperson of the American Zionist Emergency Council but due to differences with Abba Hillel-Silver and the growing militancy of the Zionist movement, Wise found himself increasingly isolated. He was, appointed special representative of the Jewish Agency to the United Nations Conference in San Francisco in 1945 and testified before the Anglo­American Commission in 1946. At the 22nd Zionist congress, Wise supported his old ally Chaim Weizmann, but he too was in decline. Stephen Wise died in New York on April 19, 1949.